Pieces of Us
by blue252
Summary: "I hadn't seen a sunset like that in forever. Do you remember how incredible the colors were? It was like the sky was on fire, all the reds and pinks and oranges blurred together." Her voice lilts toward him, tugs him deeper into the memory. - A 6x08 post-ep.


_AN: I wanted to write something after 6x08 aired but I thought there'd probably be a ton of post-eps. When there weren't, I decided to write this. It's set later that night, after the episode ends. I haven't read any other 6x08 post-eps so I hope that it doesn't repeat anything someone else has already done. Thanks so much for reading._

* * *

**Pieces of Us**

"I can't believe you kept the shells."

They're curled up on the couch, exchanging idle conversation while watching the city lights flicker outside his window from underneath an old, worn throw. The blanket is one of her favorites; another distinctly Beckett belonging that has managed to migrate its way from her apartment to his loft.

_Home_. She'd called it home the other morning, when his brain wasn't nearly awake yet and thoughts of losing Linus took over and jolted him out of the bed before he could even begin to process how easily the word rolled off her tongue.

_Home_.

It hadn't quite hit him when she said it; but here, in the calm of the evening with the case closed and Kate in his arms, it weaves around his mind again. It's not the first time she's used the term but it never fails to amaze him - even now, with his ring on her finger and eighty percent of her clothes in his closet.

It amazes him because he can tell she _feels_ it. That she's completely at home with him. She's tucked herself into his chest in that way she loves to do at the end of a long day when they settle in together after dinner with glasses of wine. It's a routine they've developed, one that he's grown to love more than most anything else. Just the two of them, wrapped up together. It's peaceful, a feeling he's so seldom experienced outside of the times he used to spend watching over Alexis after he'd rock her to sleep as an infant.

His head has always been a steady flow of noise, full of thoughts and ideas and plots that kept him awake late into the night. And it's not that he wants to trade that in. He earned his millions off the constant racing of his mind, all the words that continuously flood his brain and spill out onto the page. It's made life exciting, allowed him to experience things he'd never have dreamed up otherwise. But it's exhausting too. It's meant living with a nagging restlessness, a perpetual pull to search for something greater.

Until Kate.

With her, the words are always there, an endless supply of inspiration, a challenge to do more - _be_ more. There's a thrill whenever they're together; it's still loud and fun and sometimes dangerous. But contrary to everyone and everything else, she also has the ability to turn it all off, to soothe the turmoil that swirls through his mind. He has a focus now that he's never had before, a purpose with her. She makes it quiet in his head.

So when she says _home_, he feels it too.

He presses his lips to her temple and she sighs, a contented sound that he feels more than hears. It spreads a warmth through him that has nothing to do with the heat from the flames crackling in his fireplace across the room.

"You were the first, you know."

She turns slightly, angles her face to look up at him. "What do you mean?"

"That weekend in the Hamptons. When you were worried about how many women I'd taken there before you. Do you remember what I said?"

She smiles slowly, bites her lip at the memory before speaking, "You said, '_None of them were you._'"

He nods, skims his hand along her arm under the blanket. "You were right that day. I'd taken other women up there before, given them the grand tour. And when you reminded me of that, part of me was worried that I'd screwed it up already. I had this whole idea in my mind of the perfect weekend - a romantic weekend away with you, but maybe it wasn't enough. Because none of those women _were_you. I wanted to make it special."

"Castle, it was insecure of me to worry about it in the first place. You didn't do anything wrong."

He shrugs. "Maybe not, but then a guy had to go and die in my pool when you were five seconds away from fulfilling at least seven different fantasies of mine."

"If I recall, _you_were the one who wouldn't leave that case alone."

"Minor details, Beckett," he says, waving his hand through the air. "Besides, that's when I knew."

"Knew what?"

"That _we_ were going to work."

"When a dead guy fell into your pool and Chief Brady insinuated that you were paying me for sex? _That's_when you knew we were going to work?"

"You have to admit that was kind of funny…" His voice trails off when he notices she's drawn away and has both eyebrows raised, leveling a glare he knows all too well in his direction. "Still too soon?"

"Always too soon, Castle."

He laughs deeply when she rolls her eyes at him, pulls her back up against his chest again. "Anyway…I _knew_ that weekend because I realized I couldn't imagine my life with anyone else. There we were, somehow in the middle of another murder investigation, cooking dinners together, drinking wine in my backyard, having _incredibly_hot sex I might add, and still staying up half the night tracking down leads. We just worked. And I remember thinking, that it was us. It wasn't what I would have planned. It wasn't anything like I'd imagined that weekend would be. It was more. And _that_ was the first time I let myself believe that it wasn't going to fade, that it wasn't just the afterglow of finally being together. That what we have is something I will never find with anyone else."

He feels her swallow, brushes the hair back from her face to look her in the eyes. He sees the love there; ever present these days, even behind the smug smile that slowly spreads across her face.

"I don't know, Castle. You sure you didn't set up that whole thing just so you could build theory with me naked in your pool?"

"Naked theory building is _definitely_ something we should have experimented with much sooner."

His arms tighten around her and it's her turn to laugh. She twists to reach up, running her hand lazily across his jaw before rising to kiss him. It's slow and languid, a compliment to the wine they've been sipping and the relief that always follows the end of a case. When she pulls away she says softly, "You never told me how I was the first."

He leans back, relaxes against the cushions again as she watches him. "You were the first woman I'd ever taken there that I loved. Or, I should say, that I was _in love_ with."

He can see the questions flickering across her face so he continues. "I don't think I even knew that myself until our weekend there." He pauses for a moment, draws a mindless pattern against her wrist with his fingertips. "Don't get me wrong. I loved Gina and what we had was good while it was good. But it wasn't this. Our walk, the day we found those shells...it was-"

"Magic." She completes the sentence as he's speaking it - echoes the word; and for a moment he's right back on the beach that day, walking hand in hand with her as the sun dipped below the dunes.

"I hadn't seen a sunset like that in forever. Do you remember how incredible the colors were? It was like the sky was on fire, all the reds and pinks and oranges blurred together." Her voice lilts toward him, tugs him deeper into the memory.

"I was looking for shark's teeth, rattling off facts about great whites and hammerheads, not even noticing, and you stopped me. You grabbed my hand and when I turned to look, I couldn't get past the way the light framed your face, like you were glowing with it. I had to kiss you right then. You made this breathless little noise that made me want to never stop, never leave that moment."

For a second she doesn't speak. She's looking at him the same way she did earlier that evening, when he dragged her into the room with her eyes closed and surprised her with the shells. No matter how many times he sees it, he will never get tired of that look. It fills him with a silly pride that he can't tamp down. Makes him feel like he's finally done something right, like with her, the possibilities are infinite.

"I love you, Rick."

"I love you too."

He laces their fingers as she props her other arm against the back of the couch and leans her head against it. She's still looking at him as she works something out in her head. "You know, I can hardly remember the last vacation I'd taken before then that didn't involve direct orders to go home or being temporarily disabled."

"You didn't realize you'd meet someone stubborn enough to not take no for an answer." He grins.

She shakes her head at him but after a moment he sees the regret flash through her eyes. "I didn't realize a lot of things, Castle, for a long time."

"You want to know why I saved those shells?"

She nods and he continues, "It stormed that afternoon and I wasn't even sure we'd get to do anything before having to drive back to the city. But the rain blew through quicker than I thought and it cleared off. The ocean was like a lake it was so calm and it made me think of trips with Alexis. How she always loved the morning after a big storm because the ocean would drag in so many shells. We'd spend hours combing the beach, looking for the prettiest ones. She'd always get disappointed when inevitably there was a crack or a hole where something had escaped from the inside. She'd eventually get frustrated and dump all of them out of her little basket and run around searching for starfish instead."

Kate laughs. "You promised you'd find her the perfect shell didn't you?"

"Of course I did! Try telling the child who cried and grounded herself the first time she made a B on a test that there is no such thing as the perfect shell. It wouldn't have been pretty."

She smiles at him, laughter still in her eyes. "The beauty is in the imperfections."

"That's what you said on the beach that day."

He can still hear her voice so clearly, can still remember the shine of her eyes as they sifted through the tiny, broken shells searching for the bigger ones. He'd been hoping to find the perfect one then too, as if it would be a sign of some sort. But she'd loved what they found, teased him when he protested that they weren't good enough, and said the words she's just repeated.

"_That's_ why I kept them, Kate. Because they reminded me of us. How the imperfections, everything that's led us here, has made us that much better. I wanted something from that weekend, something to remember how those imperfections created something beautiful."

Understanding blooms across her face, no more traces of the regret he saw before for opportunities lost, past mistakes. "I'm glad you saved them." She runs her thumb along the hand she's still holding. "Thank you for giving that to me. Thank you for believing in us."

He squeezes her hand. "Any other woman I thought I might have loved. None of them even came close. And our story - it's the greatest one I'll ever tell."


End file.
